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General discussionBlog post on EA's "access over ownership" devilry(36 posts)(36 posts)
(36 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted July 11, 2019
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bhrigu: I guess streaming movies/music is different from games. Those mediums are much more limited in their relationship with the audience, mostly. And then if one likes a movie/album so much that they want to own it, they can purchase physical media, and I don't feel ownable media is going away anytime soon.
There are many movies/albums unavailable for retail purchase, and sadly the number only seems poised to increase. I don't know about a platform for film, but Bandcamp at least provides the option of purchasing digital albums in FLAC format (some labels will even have a value option to purchase the entire label's digital discography). Was very glad to see it linked on FCKDRM.com.

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f1e: You have to buy Witcher 3 on GOG and PS4 separately, and you'll have to buy it separately on Switch as well. That's the actual outrageous day-to-day reality: no single point of purchase with access on all supported platforms. That would be more drm-free than having an offline pc-only installer. That's what actually matters, not the possibility of a top-tier provider going completely down without any trace. Evin If steam or ea or amazon goes out of business it's only because someone bigger and better got established and serves everybody and no one cares about steam or ea or amazon anymore. You think you'll care? And if you don't like being dependent on always-online internet think about how you put up with being dependent on always-online power grid.
With all due respect, no.

"Access on all platforms" is inherently NOT going to be DRM-free since nearly all platforms require DRM (and there are no signs of this changing). How would you solve the problem of the other platforms needing to "verify" access?

An offline installer is fully DRM-free for a PC release. The fact that people purchased other versions from other PC stores or console ports, doesn't change this fact.

No kidding everyone is dependent on an always-online power grid. So why add extra digital steps that compound the problem, i.e. increase the chance people can't access their games?

As for do I think I'll care, yes, I'll care. I remember what PC gaming used to be and have the potential to be. Going mainstream ruined that, and was in no small part thanks to corporate apologetics...
Posted July 13, 2019
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eric5h5: I think Valve showed what would really happen earlier this year, when they ditched support for older operating systems, with zero recourse for users.
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timppu: I already woke up to that like ten years ago or so, when Valve/Steam dropped support for Windows 2000. I was playing my Steam games (meaning Half-life 1-2 I guess; I didn't really own any other Steam games back then), when one day I suddenly couldn't launch the Steam client anymore, as it just stated support for my OS (Windows 2000) was dropped.
…
The analogy I used back then was that if all my PS2 games would have stopped working one day and there would have just been a message: "Sorry but Sony does not support PS2 anymore. If you want to continue playing your PS2 games, please upgrade to a PS3. Thank you for your co-operation, good night.". And then the Robocop theme music would start playing.
I take it that, should you not have decided to upgrade your OS, there was little chance of sourcing (no pun intended) the previous (Win2k) client? That is bad faith.
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timppu: Here is an example of what I was talking about earlier, how "the masses" don't necessarily realize (rather than "don't care") about what DRM can mean to them:

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-ebook-apocalypse-drm/

One reason DRM persists is that it remains relatively hidden from the consumer. Amazon and other ebook stores do offer some non-DRM titles but don’t make the distinctions clear. And Perzanowski’s research has shown that a “sizable percentage” of shoppers think that clicking Buy Now entitles them to similar ownership privileges of digital goods—lending, gift-giving, and more—as their physical counterparts.
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timppu: So I guess the point is that first the masses must understand (= be educated about) the consequences to them if and when a store/service shuts down, AND that many times there are alternatives (like GOG) and they can make choices based on what happens to the content after the store is long gone.

In this case, MS decided to refund the purchased books, but I guess they'd do this only because there were so few customers and MS has other sources of income. A digital gaming store like Steam would definitely not refund all customers all their games on the closure, after all those monies are used up and long gone. :)
I think the crucial point is that the obligation is not a legal one, and more a marketing one. What I mean is that, without the force of law, the decision to refund historical purchases is only dependent on how bad it would look on social media, i.e., the impact on future sales. (Why buy something that may not exist later?)

I concur completely that education is the first, best approach for minimizing this antisocial corporate practice, but I am unsure how one would execute such teaching … maybe a court-ordered publication of this (a pop-up type of balloon-help that gives a factual reference to this incident) at the point of purchase? Most people, by design (of the developers) just click through the EULA.

A legal approach that has had some success is enforcing plain English contracts, meaning that the verbal diarrhoea that typifies most point-of-sale agreements needs to be written in a few simple sentences, a bit like the explanatory column that Gog inserts adjacent to their legalese paragraphs (see the privacy statement for a good example).
Posted July 14, 2019
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f1e: Evin If steam or ea or amazon goes out of business it's only because someone bigger and better got established and serves everybody and no one cares about steam or ea or amazon anymore. You think you'll care?
Why would I stop caring about the games I have, just because the store (or service) from which I originally bought them has closed down?

If you, say, bought a bunch of PS4 games from your local Mom's&Pop's Video Game store, and that store later closes down, does it mean you don't care about those PS4 games anymore, and you are willing to re-buy them all from some other, newer, store? Why?

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f1e: And if you don't like being dependent on always-online internet think about how you put up with being dependent on always-online power grid.
First of all, you are incorrect. I can play games on e.g. my laptop, tablet or phone, without being constantly connected to the power grid. :^P

Anyway, the reason why I put up with video gaming needing electricity is simply because there is no other, even theoretical, choice. Computers and consoles simply NEED electricity in order to run, period. DRM, on the other hand, is not a necessity for the games to run. For single-player games, it is merely a nuisance to me, the consumer.

Another reason why I put up with electricity is because the games don't depend on certain kind of electricity which I can get only from certain power plant. If, say, the power plant where I get my electricity now closed down, fine, then I'd continue playing my games with electricity from some other power plant, or even get a generator or solar panel to generate me power. I don't have to rebuy all my games just because my electricity supplier changes.

Also you are a bit confused what people are complaining about regarding DRM. It is not so much internet itself, but that you are dependent on some service or server(s) out there, which happen to be on the internet. It is the same if I had to make some phone call to a certain phone number always when I want to play a game or watch a DVD movie I have. If that phone number ceased to exist, then I couldn't call them anymore in order to use the product I have bought, EVEN if I still had a working phone line.
Post edited July 15, 2019 by timppu
Posted July 14, 2019
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RawSteelUT: EA being EA, any business model they use is really irrelevant to anyone outside of sports gamers or suckers. Do they make games that are even worth a fuck anymore?

As for subscriptions in general, I can't see how these can't co-exist with traditional ownership models. Let's not forget that people still can, and will, buy music and movies/shows they're into. Netflix and Redbox killed rental, not purchasing, but there's always been non-ownership and ownership ways to enjoy entertainment, between radio, TV, theaters, rogue streams (Kodi) or rental systems of some sort. Honestly, I think it'll be a VERY long time before we even get to the point where subs can come close to replacing anything, but they can co-exist, and USED to co-exist when we were younger in the gaming space (arcades).

Honestly, EA will continue to disappoint because that's what they do, but for the rest of the industry, I don't think a return of an arcade/rental option will be the death of all things. As Nintendo is proving with the Switch, there's more than one way to do things, and unless the gaming industry is stupid enough to limit itself to the most major of all urban centers, we're going to be able to buy games outright for a long while to come. There are, after all, only so many live service games that will survive.
I'll never go for a music subscription as i'm not always online, and i like to transfer between devices, Movies.. sure there is that much crap produced that i wouldn't want to risk buying it, i don't have a tv license nor live TV of anykind so movies is background noise for me, or something to watch when i want.

I do buy movies, boxsets, and games, but space constraints means that along with the majority of my music, i'm going completely digital with purchases now, i may purchase the odd collectors edition if i deem it worth while, but that won't be often.

But my kind of digital means i will transfer it from and to any device i so choose, will be entirely available offline, no matter what any dick in a corporate suit wants to say about it. I'm an honest guy but i'm not being screwed over by dishonest people.
Post edited July 14, 2019 by DetouR6734
Posted July 16, 2019
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timppu: ...
Sorry for late reply, just saw the notification.

Yours are good points. Save for some misunderstanding on the first one. We need to think of some service that was popular but went out of business because it became obsolete and lost all its userbase. Like nokia. Imagine you bought some stuff on your symbian phone and now it's all gone. Do you hold your android/ios phone in your hand and think "I wish I could play snake or tetris or magic chess on my symbian now, after all I paid real money for them 8 years ago"? Steam or ea are top-tier providers, for them to shut down something really big needs to happen, big enough to make them irrelevant.
Posted July 17, 2019
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DetouR6734: I'll never go for a music subscription as i'm not always online, and i like to transfer between devices, Movies.. sure there is that much crap produced that i wouldn't want to risk buying it, i don't have a tv license nor live TV of anykind so movies is background noise for me, or something to watch when i want.
Never understood the point of paying for a music sub myself. There's a wealth of internet radio options for those who want to put in even the smallest bit of effort, and Pandora has a free service with some ads, so it's not that dissimilar to radio itself. Netflix, I get, because it's cheaper than cable and fills the rental market along with RedBox.

Honestly, I don't see transferable media going away any time soon. We all know what's going to happen once every studio has their own service. Same shit happened with music not too long ago, and we all know how effective DRM is in gaming.

As for games, there will always be a large market for single player games. Japanese developers seem to have grown out of their "western appeal" phase, and most of their games focus on optional and-or asynchronous multiplayer, if any at all, and even among Western developers (outside of EA, Activision and Ubi), you don't really see a push to abolish single player. Honestly, I think the only reason that we still see EA, Activision and Ubi desperately trying to push their bullshit is because, for all the industry's growth over the past two decades, it's nowhere near mainstream.

Honestly, I think there's too much of a knee-jerk assumption that the actions of EA, Activision and Ubi are the end all, be all, when in reality there's plenty of good actors, as evidenced by GOG's very existence. Eventually, either the industry will crash again, or the three devil publishers will follow Konami out the door toward the greener pastures of mobile and casino gaming (redundant, I know).
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Community
General discussionBlog post on EA's "access over ownership" devilry(36 posts)(36 posts)
(36 posts)